The Gibbs lab will undergo significant changes in people in the coming months. Pending successful defenses of their theses in the near future (!), PhD students Matt Holding and Rob Denton will be leaving to take up postdoctoral positions. In June, Matt will be moving to Florida to first, take a position with Dr. Chris Parkinson, Department of Biology, University of Central Florida as a postdoc for a year on our NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity Grant on snake venom evolution before then moving to take up his two year NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship on morphological and venom evolution in snakes with Dr. Darin Rokyta, Department of Biological Science, Florida State University. In August, Rob will move to Dr. John Malone’s lab in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, to work on amphibian genome evolution (including unisexual Ambystoma salamanders). Congratulations to both – they will be sorely missed!
Three migrants will arrive to join current PhD students, Scott Martin and Jamin Wieringa: Dr. Mike Broe, Dr. Alex Ochoa, and Alyssa Bigelow. Mike will take up a postdoctoral position as part of our NSF venom grant to work on genomic structure of snake venom genes. Alex will be joining us from the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona where he completed his PhD on Florida panther genomics. He will be working on an OBCP-funded project examining the genomic consequences of population bottlenecks on adaptive variation in Massasauga rattlesnakes. Finally, Alyssa will be joining the lab from Florida State University where she most recently has been working as a technician in the Rokyta and Lemmon Labs to take up a position as a PhD student working on the genomic basis of coevolutionary interactions between rattlesnakes and squirrels. Welcome to all!